Board Game Review: Civilization

Civilization has become a favorite game of mine in the past few months. I'm training my son to play, and he beat me on his second try! There is a lot to learn..its a very complicated game. I like complication! Easy games are boring.

This Civ games uses tiles for the map, which you must discover as you go. They start face down and your armies (the flag unit) and scouts (the wagon unit) can explore as they go. First you must pick a tribe to start the game with. French, Roman, English, Zulu, Aztec, Japanese, Chinese....there are many choices, The game was carefully designed for each people to have unique abilities. The Mongols for example, start with 2 extra horsemen, so they may pillage early and often.

The french start with a pottery tech, which unlocks a granary and helps your city expand faster. The Zulu can conquer native villages without even fighting them (my son used this very effectively and I think it won him the game)

Much like the computer game, you start off with almost nothing, and have to build up by acquiring techs and building buildings around your city. Here in the following picture you can see the market board. On the very left are Wonders (Ancient, Medieval and Modern) you can build, as well as ll the buildings, which are unlocked by techs you acquire as you go. The bottom row is the culture track. By advancing up the culture track you can get powerful culture cards like obsoleting other tribe's ancient wonders or learning techs for free. On the right are the army cards. If your armies clash on the board you must fight with the army cards, but woe to the loser as there is looting involved!

Tech cards also upgrade your armies. Archers, become catapults, which eventually become tanks. See tech pyramid below (level I techs are at bottom, level II techs on top of that, etc. If you make it to level V you win the game)

Here is a picture of our map, mid play. I'm the red player (I chose the french), and have my capital city on the bottom left. The Japanese (bottom right) are advancing on me with their great army (2 flags). I built an aqueduct on my capital city, and doubled production in my other city (x2 hammer icon). I ended up losing this game because I was focusing on culture but I didnt build enough defenses against the hostile neighbors. (I built walls in the city but that wasnt enough)

I did do well on my tech pyramid though. (see below) One flaw I see with this game is that the winner-by-tech-pyramid should not count, because it is too easy to build up. I think the 3 other ways to win are much harder (advancing up culture track, conquering a capital city, or gaining an economic victory), and its more fun to focus on those.